Share this with

A woman grieves for her mother in Beichuan, in China’s Sichuan province

The UK’s Chinese community will join their compatriots as they begin three days of official mourning.

The Chinese embassy in London will open a book of condolences as Chinese government buildings fly the flag at half-mast.

Three minutes of silence will be held at 7.28am BST, exactly one week after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck, killing an estimated 50,000 people.

The embassy has also listed urgently needed relief equipment, including X-ray machines, optical search devices and circular saws, as well as water purifiers, stretchers, tents and wheelchairs.

A spokesman for the embassy said: “We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all the people who follow closely and show sympathy to quake victims in China.”

British tourists on a panda-watching trip at the Wolong Nature Reserve, in Wenchuan county, when the earthquake struck have themselves been thanking the Chinese people.

Judy Ling Wong, 59, told the China Daily in Beijing: “We were in the middle of the panda centre surrounded by sheer cliffs. Rocks fell all around. But here I am, completely fine – and that is only half the miracle. The other half is the Chinese people and the way they took care of us.”

Ms Wong, a director of the Black Environment Network, from Llanberis, Wales, who was awarded a CBE last year for services to heritage, praised local people for sharing the little food they had.

The 19 British tourists spent three nights on a bus, unable to contact the outside world, before being evacuated to Chengdu by Chinese military helicopter.

Official figures put the death toll at 32,476, with more than 220,000 injured. Many bodies lay by roadsides in body bags or wrapped in plastic sheeting.